


It’s Called: Freefall

by skittykitty



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Amputee Dipper Pines, Angst, Assisted Suicide, Burns, Canon Divergence - Weirdmageddon, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, No Romance, Older Dipper Pines, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Depression, So much trauma, Suicidal Dipper Pines, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, Trauma, hes only 15 dont expect much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-07-28 17:36:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20067925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittykitty/pseuds/skittykitty
Summary: Everything shifts when Dipper is not with Ford when Weirdmageddon begins. He has no idea what is happening, so he runs.He never stops running.





	1. The Beginning of the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MielLebu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MielLebu/gifts).

> This is for Ron! They helped me come up with this and I hope I can pull this off well!

The end of time began with a divide between siblings. If they had only trusted one another in those last moments, maybe none of this would have happened.

If he had only trusted her enough to tell her how important the Rift was to their continued existence.

But now Bill was free to wreak havoc upon the universe.

Dipper kept his eyes down, trying to avoid the notice of any Eyebats that were around. They were patrolling for humans and turning people into stone.

Dipper didn’t know anything about the situation.

Was anyone he knew still alive? Were the people who were turned to stone dead? Was Ford alive? Was _Stan?_

But, he knew what kind of monster Bill was.

His sister was probably dead.

She had set him free, so he had killed her. It didn’t make too much sense, _but since when did anything Bill do make sense?_

Maybe it was a sort of “I’ll kill her so she won’t suffer” sort of thing?

Dipper forced himself to focus off of that. He wouldn’t be able to focus if he thought of her.

He had to live.

For her.

Trekking across the abandoned town, Dipper kept his eyes on the end of the barrier. It would either kill him, or it would let him through.

* * *

Before he could get there, he encountered a terrifying scene.

Bill playing with Ford. He was toying with the man, moving him around as if he was a toy soldier in Bill’s control.

Using what energy he had remaining, Dipper ran up to the group. He prepared to yell at Bill, for some impulsive reason he couldn’t remember seconds later.

He should’ve died in those moments.

_But he lived on._

* * *

_“Hey! It’s that kid you told us about, Bill!”_ The Teeth-Monster yelled, making the collection of horrifying monstrosities stare him down. The monsters who had mouths grinned at him, most likely only seeing a meal in his thin frame.

He quickly began to backpedal away and ran like his life depended on it.

Grass crunched underfoot as he tried fruitlessly to remember all of the lessons on running he had in gym class.

He lengthened his stride as yelling erupted from behind him, he would keep running and running until he was safe.

He had to.

_(But nowhere in the town was safe from the demon who haunted their dreams.)_

A monster began to give chase to its prey, dogging after his heels like a rabid dog. Teeth clacked together menacingly, cackles suffocating the air in Dipper’s lungs.

He wasn’t drawing in enough air.

_No._

_This couldn’t be happening now._

His legs were shaking. He was slowing down. _He was going to die._

With tears flowing from his eyes, he resolved himself, _no, I’m not going out like this._

He readied himself for one last ditch effort to escape his pursuers, but as he did teeth snapped around his arm.

The preteen twisted away from the unrelenting jaws, trying to squeeze out of the tight grasp, but he just helped the monster tear him apart.

A squelching sound reverberated through his ears, his eyes watching as the teeth (it was just… teeth with legs and arms) drew his arm into its jaws.

Blood splattered across the previously pearly white teeth. Gore laying itself across the insides of the mouth, as Dipper watched the arm (his arm) be consumed bit by bit in the _demons_ jaw.

Quickly deciding to ignore the trauma and blood loss, Dipper ran, heading towards the woods. He knew these woods better than anyone else in the town. He may be unable to outrun them but he could definitely outmaneuver them.

He _would_ escape the town, even if it killed him.

And judging by how what used to be his right arm wouldn’t stop bleeding, it just might.

* * *

Dipper was now shirtless, with only his jacket on as a guardian from chills. His shirt was blood soaked, as it was being used to make sure he didn’t bleed to death.

The pain was sharp when the trauma was still fresh, but had lessened to a mere simmer now. The pain was everywhere, but it was something he could get used to.

Dipper decided he had to leave the town for good.

His sister was missing, but all of his family and friends were smart enough to leave town, weren’t they?

_(Months later, when the barrier broke and Weirdmageddon took over, Dipper knew none of his family were smart enough to leave.)_

* * *

After a relatively short trek, Dipper reached the barrier.

He hoped,_ prayed,_ it would let him through.

He held up his left arm_ (his only arm now)_ and pressed his palm to the barrier, hoping it wouldn’t burn off his hand.

As he stepped through the barrier, he was attacked by the contrast of the two realities.

One was coated in ash and the air was rough to breathe in at first, making coughs rack your lungs, while the other had relatively clear air that was easily breathable.

One had soft green grass, the other had yellow, wilted grass.

Dipper spotted a small house in the distance, and began the short trek to it. His shirt was barely working to stop the blood flow now.

He needed help.

* * *

The family who lived there had taken notice of Dipper when he got within sight. They were good people, patching him up and not charging him anything.

He had a wrap of bandages around his stump. It had stopped bleeding a while ago, but for now they were just worried about infection setting in.

Of course, no one was nice enough to spend a ton of money for a complete stranger, so he didn’t have a prosthesis.

But he wouldn’t need one anyway.

* * *

Dipper left the family a few weeks later, and began to walk past the fields.

Corn grew rampant around here, most likely all of it would be cut and sold soon. The tall stalks swayed in the wind, pushing each other as they all moved as one.

They were in perfect sync.

_(Dipper and Mabel were like one unit, complete opposites but always beside one another._

_Now Dipper was alone, an amputee, and had lost hope._

_He didn’t even know if his twin was alive.)_

Dipper decided to prepare now for his impending doom.

He stood on his tiptoes, reaching for the corn. As he ripped it away from the stalk, he placed it in a bag he had taken from the family.

* * *

Now with a backpack full of corn, he started to walk again.

His feet began to hurt after a few hours, but he didn’t like the risk of hitchhiking, so he walked.

Darkness had long since covered the sky, though out in the middle of nowhere the stars shone like diamonds. Dipper could only see vague outlines of the world, it was all covered in layers of shade.

He wondered how so many cultures had found meaning in the stars when now, looking into the sky with nothing to expect, allowed him to feel more free than any religion ever had.

* * *

He walked the night, until he eventually ended up in a nearby town.

He slept on park benches for weeks, waiting for the moment everything would change.

When people mocked him for being homeless, when mothers steered their kids away from him, none of it mattered to him anymore.

He had abandoned everything he cared about.

And he had paid his price.

He still had phantom pains, moving to use his right hand only to remember it wasn’t there anymore.

Some kids occasionally would ask how he lost his arm, and usually someone close to them would apologize to him and take the kid away.

But there was no adult this time.

“Sir!” A little girl called out running to him as he sat in the middle of the bench, minding his own business. “Sir, I was wondering, well,” she peered closer, looking at his missing arm. “How did you lose your arm?”

_(Blood soaked into the grass, forever staining the world with his pain. He would never forget this moment._

_When he stared in incomprehension for moments before the pain kicked in while blood dripped down his side._

_Agonizing pain rippled through his body like a crashing wave to a calm beach. He had made a perfect sandcastle of his life, but had built it too close to danger._

_So it was destroyed.)_

“It’s…” He murmured, not paying attention to the kid anymore, too deeply entrenched in memories. “It… it doesn’t matter.”

Nothing mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Dippers life with his family was burned to the ground in moments, so how could he trust that he could build anything strong enough to survive the wave?

* * *

The barrier shattered on a Thursday night.

The sky brightened in a flash, turning to the color of infected wounds, a sickly pus tainted the night sky.

Well.

He had appreciated the sky while he still could.

The now teenager rose from the park bench he had inhabited for the past few days, and moved on.

He wondered if his family was looking for him. He knew in normal circumstances Mabel would, but she was most likely dead.

And Stan was more likely to go off on his own and try to forget about them than anything else.

So no, they probably weren’t trying to find him.

That… that was fine.

_(He wasn’t fine. He could never be fine again, after everything he had been through._

_He wanted to cry so badly, but a wall of numbness stopped the waterfall of tears.)_

* * *

Within months he had found a new way of living in this environment.

He would raid abandoned houses for food and water, among other things.

The first time he killed someone he was thirteen.

_(She was screaming. A house had crumbled down onto her and crushed her. She had been trapped there for hours now._

_She was bleeding out, and he was too weak to get all of the pieces off of her._

_She had begged him to do it.)_

He didn’t think about it until it was over.

He only had a short knife, so he slit her neck quickly and quietly. Blood splattered across his cheeks, looking like freckles over his skin.

The drops slowly slid down his skin, leaving red marks in their wake.

He walked away from the corpse, and tried to forget about his actions.

* * *

Soon people began to think that just because he was an amputee that he would be an easy target.

_(Waking up in the night to a knife to his neck. Desperate fathers begging him to just leave his supplies, he doesn’t want to hurt a kid._

_Dipper got a new scar that day, and now there’s more than just a drop of blood on his hands.)_

He proves them wrong.

* * *

It’s been two years now, since Dipper ran.

Other survivors, hardened from grief and pain, didn’t often underestimate him. But, Dipper was a fast runner when he tried to be, and could often outlast an opponent rather than outmatch them.

But most of them had allies, had a family, had a _reason_ to keep going.

The one thing Dipper did not have.

Until now.

* * *

He had stumbled upon her as he paused in an abandoned building to wrap up a bleeding wound. The blood had dried on his skin, leaving a fine crust around the wound he would have to chip away at before he could bandage it.

She was huddled in the corner of the building, hiding behind long-abandoned boxes. He only noticed her because of the need to constantly be aware of everything in the apocalypse.

At first, he went to kill her.

With an ax held above her head and tears streaming down her cheeks, he felt a glimmer of remorse.

He hadn’t felt anything like this in _years_. The closest thing to it was the adrenaline of running for his life. It was like he had spent his whole life with earplugs in, hearing everything dulled down, and had taken them out and now he could hear everything in pristine detail.

It was almost too much for him.

_“Please,”_ she whispered, too scared to break the moment that was keeping her alive. _“Please don’t kill me.”_

Not breaking the eye contact he began to lower his ax, allowing her to live another day.__

* * *

She refused to leave his side.

Her name was Lily, like the flower. But she didn’t _look_ like a lily, not really.

She had choppily-cut penny-brown hair that sat on her shoulders. It looked like it was due for a haircut, but, so was everyone in the apocalypse.

Dipper’s hair had grown out of control for the past two years, leading to constant rats in his hair and a lot of pain from that. He occasionally cut pieces of it off, but didn’t do much styling on it.

Lily was always telling him bits and pieces of her past, how her dad had left one day and never came back a few days before he showed up. Her mother had died a long time ago, she could barely remember her.

She didn’t talk about her family often.

Her olive-green eyes dulled at the thought of them. At the pure _uncertainty_ of her family. Her father could be dead, or he could’ve gotten frustrated with her and just… _left._

_(Maybe he had been like Dipper, and gave up.)_

He felt bad, in the silence that ensued, and told her stuff he had buried for years.

How he had lost his arm.

How much guilt he felt when he had to kill people.

How much he _missed_ seeing the occasional roadkill on the road even if it was such a weird thing to miss. Who would miss _dead animals?_

He grew to love her like a little sister._ (Like Mabel,_ a demon whispered in his ear._ You’re just replacing her, aren’t you?)_

He wasn’t replacing her.

Mabel was his past.

He wouldn’t give up on Lily, he _couldn’t_. Lily was his future, was his motivation to live another day.

If she died so too would his will to live.

He was too attached.

But he didn’t care anymore.

* * *

Months passed.

Dipper grew more and more tired by the day. Tired of life, tired of running from the beasts chasing him.

Lily kept him going.

_(His arm began to ache again. After years of numbness to started up again, could it mean something?)_

His hair grew long past his shoulders, he was too tired to cut it, and didn’t trust Lily with a knife enough to let her do it.

He was… _always_ tired nowadays.

The teenager rarely ate, always telling Lily he had already eaten even though she could see his through his lies as easily as she could see his ribs.

It didn’t matter.

* * *

It all ended in between one moment and the next.

One moment he was content, almost happy.

The next he was being steamrolled under devastation.

_He tucked her into bed before he left._

* * *

He didn’t come back, roaming the streets with no supplies.

This would be his last day alive, he knew.

He walked for awhile in plain view of anyone, he hoped one of Bill’s minions would kill him, they couldn’t kill someone slowly if they were tasked with it.

He was too weak for suicide, so he was going to have someone else do it for him.

Footsteps sounded behind him, they weren’t even trying to hide themselves.

Something rammed into the back of his head, making the back of his eyes ache as the fifteen year old tried to rise from the ground only to get knocked back down.

Adrenaline flooded through him, revitalizing his efforts to escape._ No,_ he realized, _I don’t want to die. Not like this._

He was able to get one foot under him before his neck was gripped by a very… _human_ hand. His eyes blearily scanned the man seconds from killing him. He had a thick beard, and small freckles over his nose.

He kind of looked like a lumberjack, now that he looked closer. His eyes were dull, he must be killing him for supplies.

The lumberjack had a knife.

_He wouldn't survive this,_ he realized in belated horror.

* * *

The teenager scrabbled frantically at the hand around his neck, silently begging to be spared.

_Please, god, let me live,_ he silently prayed. He had never prayed before in his life. He had never meant it like he did now.

He would give _anything_ to live.

Blood splashed onto the man’s shirt, he’d probably just find a new shirt but Dipper felt a vindictive glee that he had messed up the man’s day up in that small way.

As the knife cut through his chest, making Dipper lose the last shreds of his consciousness with every slide of the knife in his chest.

So _this_ was his end.

This was just _pathetic._

He was dropped onto the cracked concrete ground, dropped like trash as the man opened Dipper’s jacket, searching for supplies.

Shadows covered his vision as he heard a curse, these were his last moments.

It could have been beautiful, he could have starved to death, alone.

But he had let himself be dragged down by petty connections with a child.

He would never get attached to anyone ever again, he swore.

* * *

That was supposed to be his end.

He was supposed to have been desperate to live, but died anyway. That was reality.

Reality did not give second chances.

Dipper’s cheek ached.

His cheek couldn’t ache if he was _dead,_ could it?

He opened his eyes, squinting in the sun’s glare. He hadn’t seen the sun in years. This couldn’t be real.

_No._

He heard a quiet chatter through the bus, as a pair of twins talked quietly to one another. One was excited and happy while the other was more cautious.

This had to be a hallucination.

“Mabel, you shouldn’t be so excited!”_ No. This couldn’t be real._ “What if our Great Uncle is like, a—a murderer or something! You have to be careful!”

“Pfft!” She couldn’t be Mabel. “Of course he’s not a murderer, Dip-Stick! Mom and Dad wouldn’t leave us with a murderer!”

Tears slid down his face unknowingly to him, Mabel was here, she was alive. He didn’t know how, he had long since left her behind, but she was here _now_ and that was all that mattered.

_(He knew, deep down that none of this could be real. He was dead. Mabel was dead.)_

Unless... he began to think about his situation. He had read a lot of sci-fi books in his youth, leading him to his temporary possibility.

_He was in the past._


	2. Smoke in the Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I figured out what I'm doing with this fic and I've added some more warnings! I'll update them as I go, but watch out for tentative Major Character Death guys!

Dipper faded from reality for the rest of the bus ride after this realization. Mabel, his twin, his other half, was alive._ (If she had even been dead in the first place.)_

But she didn’t know him. She didn’t know what he’d been through. Didn’t know how he had lost his arm, didn’t know about _Lily._

_Would she even recognize him?_

With only one arm, too-long hair and two times as many scars across his body, she wouldn’t—_couldn’t_—recognize him.

Not with her own brother beside her, keeping her happy.

She was happy without him.

She… didn’t need a second, overly traumatized brother.

* * *

When they arrived at Gravity Falls, Dipper walked away so he wouldn’t have to see any potentially heartbreaking moments.

_(Mabel cheered as the bus came to a stop, hurriedly rushing past. Her brother stopped and apologized for her behavior before following her.)_

He wandered the sparse woods around the bus stop, watching as the sun slowly climbed the horizon. Creatures scattered around the bushes as he walked past them, scared of this new creature they had never encountered.

_(He suppressed the instinct he had gained over the past few years; the urge to attack, to kill, to_ survive.)

Dipper breathed in the fresh air, astounded by how such a small thing could lighten the weight on his chest so much. He wouldn’t miss the smoky air of Bill’s apocalyptic world.

_(Every breath was a choke, he had to learn how to properly breathe the air, which was breathe as little as possible.)_

In the midst of enjoying the air, it felt as if something caught in his chest. As if there was a boulder in his throat he was trying to dislodge.

He knew what this was. Too much ash in one’s throat would probably give some kind of lung condition. All of the survivors he had seen, even in passing, all had a similar problem to him.

His lungs were similar to someone who had been smoking for years, for he had been exposed to such toxic air for just as long.

It was always a toss-up between suicide and his lungs, of which would kill him in the end.

_(Personally, he’d rather not die from his lungs. They hurt a bit too much for him to enjoy his last moments.)_

* * *

It was dusk, and Dipper was in too deep.

He had gone off the designated trail, thinking he knew these woods better than anyone else.

But he had forgotten he hadn’t seen them in two years.

So, he was lost in a forest filled with monsters.

He didn’t mind, he had already died once, what was once more?

* * *

The next morning found him asleep on a park bench. His right side was sluggishly bleeding over the side of the bench, probably leaving a stain on it as he wasn’t exactly cleaning it up.

He had run into a Sphinx in the night, being taken off guard as he (somehow) hadn’t seen it coming.

It had gotten one good hit on him before he was able to run away.

It may have hurt, but it gave him such a rush of adrenaline. It made him want to sprint for hours, and keep running until his body couldn’t go anymore. It made him feel like he could do anything.

_He had to do it again._

_He needed that rush._

* * *

“Hey,” a voice roused him from his nap. “Hey, kid, you’re not supposed to sleep on the benches.” Dipper was met with a black hoodie when he opened his eyes. He vaguely recognized it, but didn’t care enough to think about it further.

“Mmm,” he groaned. “Don’ wanna get up.” He tucked himself against his arm, trying to fall back to sleep.

“Well that’s too bad, isn’t it?” And then he was pushed off the bench onto the unforgiving ground.

Landing face-first in the dirt was an odd sensation to Dipper’s bleary mind. He didn’t even realize it had happened until a few seconds later. Sputtering, Dipper lifted himself up. “What—why did you—?”

A very familiar teenager sat on his bench, watching as Dipper stared accusingly at him. “Name’s Robbie,” he lips quirked as Dipper stood up. “Yours?”

He couldn’t go by Dipper anymore. Not here, with another Dipper already here. He had changed too much to be that kid.

He wasn’t a kid who worse shorts and constantly wore hats to avoid being stared at. He was older and more mature.

He cared less about what had once been a giant thing for him.

He had hated to be called Mason, but that was in the past now.

“Name’s Mason,” he held out his palm to Robbie, wondering if the teenager would comment on his lack of an arm.

As they shook on it, eyes meeting in a quiet solidarity, Robbie moved over so Dipper—no, he had to go by Mason now, he reminded himself—had room to sit.

They sat in silence for the next few minutes, until Mason dozed off beside Robbie.

* * *

The kid was pretty cute, Robbie mused. With his long hair which was too consumed by rats to be attractive, and the obvious constant stress on him, he obviously deserved a nap.

He was normally rude to everyone, snapped at anyone and everyone, but he could almost… relate to the kid.

He didn’t even know his age, only his first name, _Mason_. It was odd, but endearing, like everything else about him.

Keeping an eye on the kid, Robbie fished out a cigarette from his pocket. Lighting it, he angled it so none of the smoke went into Mason’s face. Didn’t want him to wake up to a lungful of smoke, did he?

No matter how many precautions Robbie had taken to not wake up the obviously sleep deprived kid, he woke up with a series of coughs that built up to him leaning over his legs, hacking into his thighs.

Robbie awkwardly patted him on the back, not really helping Mason with his issue nor making it worse.

When his fit was over, Mason gazed at him awkwardly as his hand caressed his throat, trying to make the last bits of pain disappear.

“You good?” Robbie asked, holding his still-burning cigarette away from the two of them so that none of the smoke could get into Mason’s obviously sensitive lungs.

The wind must have changed while he hadn’t been paying attention, but it was a strangely intense response to a tiny amount of smoke.

“Yeah…” Mason croaked out, his voice deceptively weak as he stared at Robbie’s broken-heart jacket. “I uh…” He took note of Robbie’s cigarette, but moved on quickly. “I spent the past few years constantly breathing fumes so my lungs are _really_ messed up.”

He panted for a moment, trying to regain his lost breath. “It’s not your fault.”

They spent the next hour or so sitting there, beside one another until Mason left with no explanation. It was fine, Robbie thought, the kid was probably going home for lunch.

* * *

Mason was starving.

He had no feasible way of easily getting food (other than scouring the trashcan of Greasy’s Diner, which now that he thought about it was probably the easiest solution), so he began to wander the small town.

The whole town had dirt roads, making all of the paths easy to be walked but surprisingly hard to drive through.

Every once in a while as he trekked the path, Mason would stumble upon a random building. Most of the houses were built around each other and few were abandoned, so the few he stumbled on were mostly underused parks or abandoned stores.

Maybe someone had accidentally left something behind in one? Something he could eat? Mason approached an abandoned gas station, hoping that they had left some candy or something behind.

As he prowled around the aisles, he took note of how it had probably already been invaded by teenagers in its past. There were very few items left in the store, there were a couple of candies left, mainly those disliked by just about everyone. Mason pocketed what food he could find as he continued to search the store.

People tended to throw stuff around when they thought no one would notice, he had noticed that rather soon into his first few months in the apocalypse. If he checked the corners, he would most likely find more food.

And he did.

By the end of his search, he had maybe two days worth of candy to eat, if he ate sparingly.

He did one last once-over of the building. There were a few items that couldn’t be eaten or carried very easily. A gasoline canister was held in one aisle, half full, but there weren’t many matches around, so it couldn’t be too easy to light.

Mason had found that lighting large buildings on fire was a relaxing activity fairly early on in the apocalypse. As long as nothing important was in there? Free game.

He began one last search of the building, finding a match hidden under the cashier’s counter. Probably had been pushed there by a cashier who didn’t want to bend down to pick it up that had been forgotten to time.

Now with a match, he knew he had everything he needed to light the place aflame.

He awkwardly opened the cap to the canister of gasoline, heaving it up quickly, trying to not waste a lot of gasoline. With only one hand, it was a challenging task. Usually one would use one hand to hold it and the other to open it, but Mason had to just hope he wouldn’t waste anything.

As Mason hobbled around the store, coating the ground in gasoline, he barely noticed as his shoes began to coat itself in gasoline.

* * *

Standing outside the building, Mason got a good look at the gas station, wondering what it’d look like aflame. It would look amazing in the current sunlight, the sun was going down and leaving a nice shadow covering the ground in front of the gas station.

It was a nice time for a fire.

Mason sat awkwardly on the ground, keeping the container of matches between his legs so he could light the match. As he swiped the match, he hurriedly threw it into the gasoline.

Flames quickly spread from the match, consuming the gasoline coating the ground of the gas station. The flames would be small for the first few minutes until they were able to consume more of the building, _then_ it would become a problem.

The fire lit up his face, allowing anyone who was looking to see clearly just how malnourished Mason was. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a decent meal, for the last few weeks of his time in the future(?) had given Lily his meals.

_(She had always been hesitant about eating the food, always fearful that something had been put in it. Mason had never shared the fear, always trusting his food._

_He never thought that maybe,_ just maybe, _she had a good reason to be fearful.)_

The fire meshed well with the summer air, creating a pleasant warmth that seeped into Mason’s bones. This was nice.

He could probably fall asleep here if he tried.

* * *

Wendy has stayed late at the Mystery Shack, some customers had decided that even though the sign said they were closing in five minutes that they were _important_ enough to be allowed in. And Stan was too enamoured with money to let any customers go, so she had to let them stall her a full half hour until she could leave.

That was why she was walking home at dusk, walking past all the abandoned parts of town.

This was how she met Mason, the resident homeless raccoon man. He wasn’t a raccoon, she knew that, everyone knew that.

He just… he had eye bags and slouched constantly and was generally depressed looking, so he was a raccoon.

It was kind of endearing, in a sort of “I’d like to look at it with a wall of glass between us” kind of endearing.

But apparently he had set the old gas machine on_ fire._

_What?_

This was not what she had expected to see on her way home after a long day. She was tired and stressed, so she had an excuse for what she did next.

* * *

“Hey, kid!” A yell roused him from his quiet moment of contemplation. He quickly rose to his feet, almost slipping on a puddle of gasoline under his foot, before righting himself and sprinting away from the burning building as fast as possible.

He stayed close to the flames so his pursuer wouldn’t be able to tackle him, for fear of falling into the flames.

As he skirted just a bit too close to the flaming jaws of death a small flame attaches itself to his foot.

“Kid? Kid! Stop! You’re on fire!” She was still yelling, but it was idiotic to think he didn’t know he was on fire. He could feel as his shoe melted as the flames drew closer and closer to his skin.

He knew he would be unable to get treatment easily, that this would probably end horribly.

* * *

The kid was screaming.

Wendy was more driven by a desire to help him than a desire to reprimand him now. He was on_ fire._

Flames were crawling up his foot, biting into his pants and burning them away.

He was limping now as the fire ate at his foot, so she easily tackled him to the ground.

The two rolled as Wendy tried fruitlessly to put the flames out. The rolling wasn’t doing much, so Wendy knew she had to take drastic measures.

* * *

The pain was searing into his skin, as if the flames were all needles poking into his skin constantly.

Wendy, for he recognized her now, began to stand, most likely to yell at him or something. Maybe she’d report him to the police. That’d be fun.

But no. Instead she began _stomping_ the fire out. The fire… on his foot.

He let out a shrill scream as the pain hit its crescendo, echoing throughout his body as she kept putting out the fire.

By the time the fire was out, Mason was exhausted. He had arrived in the past, gotten beat up by a sphinx, passed out on a park bench. set himself on fire, and then got saved by a former crush from said fire.

He had had a long day.

Eyes slipping closed, he decided to just nap for a second.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic deals with a lot of heavier topics, so I hope everyone has read the tags. I hope anyone suffering similarly to anyone in this story is able to get help!
> 
> Honestly, my plan for this fic is changing a lot, so every chapter I post I'll probably change the tags. So check the tags often!


End file.
